Grief is hard to face, and this tiny poem knows it. The opening lines ask a question without quite asking it: how do you meet "the many hands of loss"? Loss here is almost a crowd, many hands reaching out at once, perhaps pulling, perhaps offering. The speaker doesn't answer in argument. Instead, the answer is an action: "I get candles."
The title, "Vigil," tells us what kind of act this is. A vigil is a watch kept through the night, often for someone who has died or is far away. The speaker lights candles and lets them "dance with the cold / night wind." That image is gentle, but it also carries risk, since flames in wind can flicker or go out.
The mood is quiet, tender, and a little fragile. The speaker seems to feel sorrow, but also a kind of acceptance. Rather than fight the cold, they let small lights move with it, and that feels like a way of facing loss.